Art Batty owned and operated several different businesses within Lethbridge during the mid to late 20th century and into the 21st. Art also owned Art Batty Construction, which he founded in Medicine Hat as an electrician. Art moved to Victoria in the 1960’s where he was given the opportunity to partner with the building of Josephine Tussaud wax museums in Canada and the USA. Art moved back to Lethbridge in 1968 where he continued his building and ownership of several businesses and motels. Art married Sonja (Davis) in 1976. Art had two children with his first wife Mary, Marcia and Lloyd. Lloyd passed away in 1988 in a motorcycle accident at Waterton Park. Art took up piloting as a hobby during the 1950’s, he was named Pilot of the Year in the late 1950’s by the Lethbridge Flying Club and Western Airlines. Art had recorded many of his life events and adventures in a book called “A Tough Ladder to Climb” with the help of Martin and Mary Oordt. Art passed away on March 20, 2007 at the age of 84.
Source: Lethbridge Herald – March 8, 2005, May 12, 1988, March 25, 2007
Sonja (Davis) Batty, wife of Art Batty, business owner and operator who lived in Lethbridge. Sonja was a senior coach for the Lethbridge Skating club during the late 1960’s to 1978. Sonja started her skating career at age 9 at an outdoor rink in Toronto as a hobby before she turned to coaching and moved to Lethbridge to become the head coach of the Lethbridge Skating Club several years after making coaching her profession. Sonja and Art Batty married in 1976. Sonja played a key role in many of the businesses owned and operated by Art during the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st.
Source: Lethbridge Herald – June 2, 1979, March 8, 2005, September 21, 1978

Annora Brown was born outside of Red Deer in 1899 and died at the age of 88 in Deep Cove, British Columbia in 1987 where she retired. Brown is one of the Alberta’s foremost early artists. Based for much of her life in historic Fort Macleod, Brown played a major role in creating a ‘picture’ of Southern Alberta: its wild landscape, First Nations, pioneer rural communities, local history- above all its wondrous nature symbolized by the wildflower. Her work was able to capture the culture of the First nation communities that she lived near.
Her father was Edmund Foster Brown and mother was Elizabeth Ethel (Cody) Brown. Her mother supported and encouraged Brown’s love for art and from 1925-1929 Brown attended the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She returned in 1929 and developed and art program for Calgary’s Mounted Royal College but later had to leave due to her mother’s illness. A student of the celebrated landscape painters, known as the Group of Seven (1920-1933), Brown’s artistic practice spans the 1930s to mid-1980s. During that time, she cobbled together a living as an artist, often by teaching, illustrating books and magazines, and selling, whenever she could, her captivating paintings in watercolor, tempera oil and later serigraph prints. In 1945-1950, brown worked as a respected artist and teacher at the Banff School of Fine Arts. She was also commissioned to paint over 200 western wild flowers for the Glenbow Foundation. Brown’s work was also included in Crescent Heights High School in Calgary, University of Alberta in Edmonton, United College in Winnipeg, and the Canadian Handicrafts Guild in Montreal. She was also awarded a prize in the Alberta Government’s 1955 Jubilee Contest for Alberta painters.
In 1965 Brown retired to Deep Cove British Columbia to paint and garden. She had given a “voice” to a region that had been rarely presented in Canadian art. Her attention to the unique aspects of Old Man’s Country like Niitsitapi, the character and isolation of its small rural communities as well as its unforgettable environment was expressed mainly through her focus on wildflowers and native plants.
Buoyed by the conviction that a woman’s activities “need not be limited to polishing furniture and raising babies”, Brown was also a writer and author of two books: the Western Canadian classic Old Man’s Garden and her autobiographical Sketches from Life. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the University of Lethbridge in 1971 for her contribution to “western art and living.” (written by Mary-Beth Laviolette; Summer 2016 Gallery Exhibit at Galt Museum)

Scope and Content

The materials were preserved and enhanced through research by Joyce Sasse
001: 1963 Day planner
002: 1964 Day planner
003: 1965 Day planner
004: Book- Proud Procession (1947)
005: Book- Young Explorers (1947)
006: Book- Totem Tipi and Tumpline (1955)
007: Book- No Man Stands Alone (1965)
008: Book- Canaries on the Clothesline (1974)
009: Sketch of Annora Brown oversized
010: 26 Photos of the Rockies
011: 2 Photos, Editorial, Crighton photocopy with description
012: 8 Photos of her house and her graduation
013: 17 Photos of the cabin, 5 prints, letters about her house in Fort Macleod, and letters from the Town of Fort Macleod
014: Research notes of Annora Brown by Joyce Sasse
015: 215 Photos building the cabin
016: 250 Photos of her art, excerpt of Sketches from Life, and later years; 3 Newspaper cutouts
Language: English